Nicky Thomas Media Consultancy » Odaline de la Martinez

Biography

Born in Cuba and raised in the United States, composer and conductor Odaline de la Martinez is one of the Britain’s most dynamic and gifted musicians. Through the years she has established an international reputation as one of the most exciting and versatile pioneers of 20^th and 21^st century music. She is in demand throughout the world both as an orchestra and opera conductor, and with her ensemble Lontano.

Since its inception in 1976 by conductor/composer Odaline de la Martinez and flautist Ingrid Culliford, Lontano has established an international reputation as one of the most exciting and versatile exponents of 20th and 21st century music.

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Latest News

Samantha Ege discusses her latest Lorelt album, Homage and upcoming book

Lorelt celebrates its 30th Anniversary

Samantha Ege discusses the inspiration behind her latest Lorelt album with VAN Magazine

Odaline de la Martinez on the cover of BBC Music Magazine

British Music Society reviews Odaline de la Martinez's Women's Voices CD

LORELT'S Women's Voices CD is Donne365 Album of the Week

BBC Radio 3 In Tune: Odaline de la Martinez on new LORELT CD

Listen: Odaline de la Martinez discusses the London Festival of American Music on BBC's Midweek

Read: Odaline de la Martinez blogs about diversity in composition on The Arts Desk

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Press Releases

London Festival of American Music presents the UK premiere of As One, a chamber opera about the journey of a transgender woman

This year’s London Festival of American Music is headlined by the UK premiere of As One, a critically-acclaimed chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed. As One has had close to 50 productions across the US and abroad since its premiere in 2014 and, according to OPERA America, has become the most produced contemporary opera in North America.

Laura Kaminsky conceived of As One after reading an article in The New York Times about a transgender man in New Jersey and realized she wanted to create an opera about a transgender individual seeking their truth. In researching source material for the story, she saw Kimberly Reed’s award-winning documentary, Prodigal Sons and reached out to the filmmaker to collaborate with the storytelling and to create an original film that would create the visual landscape for the opera. Kaminsky's concept was to write a monodrama, where a baritone and mezzo-soprano shared one role, “Hannah”, a character in dialogue with herself. And, to create an intimate sonic setting for the opera, she scored it for string quartet. After meeting the Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning librettist Mark Campbell, she asked him to join the team and create a story for the opera. Mark proposed a narrative based partially on Kimberly’s experiences as a trans person, structured the work as a song cycle in three parts and, together, they co-wrote the libretto.

Pioneering conductor and composer Odaline de la Martinez leads the eighth London Festival of American Music

Pioneering Cuban-American conductor-composer Odaline de la Martinez celebrates diversity past and present in her eighth biennial London Festival of American Music, to be held this year from Monday 13 – Saturday 18 September at The Warehouse, London.

The highlight of the Festival is the UK premiere of Laura Kaminsky’s 2014 opera As One, with its transgender protagonist sung by two voices. Further concerts will celebrate the Black Renaissance of Harlem and Chicago with pianist Samantha Ege, a focus on the composer Daniel Asia with the Lin-Linder Duo, and works by Augusta Read Thomas and Fred Lerdahl performed by Lontano Ensemble and mezzo-soprano Simone Ibbett- Brown.

Samantha Ege launches Florence Price piano album on International Women’s Day in streamed concert from Lincoln College, Oxford

Musicologist and pianist Samantha Ege launches an album of piano music by the trailblazing yet overshadowed African-American composer Florence Price on International Women’s Day. Her album includes the first full recording of all four of Price’s virtuosic Fantasie Nègre showpieces, following her rediscovery of Price’s Fantasie Nègre No. 3.

Launching the album, Ege will give a lecture-recital on Monday 8 March 2021, streamed on YouTube by TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) from Lincoln College, Oxford, where she is a Junior Research Fellow. During her International Women’s Day recital, Samantha Ege traces the lives and legacies of Black women composers in Chicago, contextualising the music of Florence Price, Nora Douglas Holt, Margaret Bonds, and Betty Jackson King, which represents the foundations of a vibrant creative network, in the transformative movement of the Negro Renaissance.

LORELT releases Women’s Voices: vocal music by Maconchy, Lefanu, McDowall, Alberga, Tann and Jazwinski

LORELT champions women composers on disc with Women’s Voices, released on Friday 24 April 2020. The disc offers the first recordings of five recent song cycles by trailblazing women composers born in the 1940s/50s – Eleanor Alberga, Barbara Jazwinski, Nicola LeFanu, Cecilia McDowall, and Hilary Tann – paired with a cycle by Elizabeth Maconchy, who was a supporter of LORELT and attended the label’s first recording sessions in 1992, near the end of her life.

Pioneering conductor Odaline de la Martinez co-curates trailblazing Juilliard Focus Festival acknowledging early 20th-century women composers

Highlighting the pioneering writing of 20th-century women composers, composer- conductor Odaline de la Martinez co-curates Trailblazers — Pioneering Women Composers of the 20th Century – a Festival she leads alongside Festival Founder Joel Sachs. The Juilliard Focus 2020 Festival celebrates the centenary of women’s suffrage in the USA, with the Nineteenth Amendment first giving women the vote in 1920.

Odaline de la Martinez conducts debut recording of Ethel Smyth’s Fête Galante with Retrospect Opera

Marking the 75th anniversary of the remarkable suffragette composer’s death in 2019, Retrospect Opera releases the first complete recording of Ethel Smyth’s Fête Galante, conducted by Odaline de la Martinez and her Lontano Ensemble. Martinez, who in 1984 became the first woman to conduct at the BBC Proms, is a renowned Smyth interpreter, and has long championed the composer’s work, first reintroducing the Smyth to the public eye with a performance of Smyth’s The Wreckers at the 1994 BBC Proms that was later released on disc.

Odaline de la Martinez champions African-American composers in her Seventh London Festival of American Music

Pioneering Cuban-American conductor-composer Odaline de la Martinez Puts African-American composers centre-stage at her seventh biennial Festival of American Music. The Festival showcases the unjustly neglected music of ten African-American composers past and present in a song recital on 28 February. Martinez also celebrates her 70th birthday with the World Premiere of her complete opera trilogy: ‘Imoinda’: A Story of Love and Slavery on 27 February, with librettist Joan Anim Addo. This is the first modern Afro-Cuban opera addressing this topic, taking inspiration from a novel by the first published female writer, the Renaissance figure Aphra Behn.

Lontano Records releases album of music by Welsh composer Grace Williams to commemorate 40th anniversary of her death

Lontano Records releases an album of welsh composer Grace Williams’ vocal works, featuring baritone Jeremy Huw Williams. Considered to be Wales’ most notable female composer, Grace Williams (1906-1977) was a student of Vaughan Williams. Her most well known works include Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes (1940) and Penillion (1955), which was written for the National Youth Orchestra. In 1949 she also became the first British woman to write the score for a feature film, with the British drama Blue Scar.

Odaline de la Martinez champions opera, The Boatswain’s Mate, by suffragette composer Ethel Smyth in debut recording with Retrospect Opera

Odaline de la Martinez champions suffragette composer Ethel Smyth’s opera The Boatswain’s Mate in debut recording with Retrospect Opera. This period comedy written by British composer and suffragette Smyth was completed in 1914 and first performed in January 1916.